Modernizing Video Surveillance with Hybrid Cloud Solutions
Nasuni’s Bobby Silva unpacks why hybrid cloud solutions are the future of video surveillance technology.
October 21, 2024 | Bobby Silva
Video surveillance technology is evolving, and it’s evolving fast. Exciting new use-cases are emerging, AI is powering advanced analytics, and cameras are capturing higher quality images than ever. This pace of change inevitably means more footage to store and manage. Legacy systems, with their limited capacity and costly infrastructure, are no longer up to the task. To modernize successfully, the physical security world needs to embrace hybrid cloud solutions.
For the past decade, physical security has lagged behind enterprise IT in cloud adoption. But, as organizations seek greater efficiency, scale, and expanded capabilities, that is now changing. A 2023 survey revealed that 67% of physical security systems are now cloud or hybrid-cloud based, which is up 50% from 2022.
Nasuni’s hybrid cloud storage model is already helping businesses and agencies take advantage of all that video surveillance now has to offer, and solving the problems of spiraling costs, inflexible data silos, and limited scalability. Here’s how we’re doing it.
Dramatic cost savings across the board
Nasuni’s hybrid cloud solutions for video surveillance are compatible with the leading Video Management Systems (VMS), integrating with industry leaders like Genetec and Milestone Systems and saving valuable time and needless expense. Replacing traditional video surveillance storage with Nasuni has proven to cut hard costs by 50%. And, by providing a single management point, Nasuni’s solution also drives down administrative overheads. For many customers, we’re talking about a 20x reduction in the number of management points!
Use-cases spanning a range of verticals
Video surveillance has been instrumental in aiding public safety efforts for state and local government agencies around the globe. The Chicago Transit Authority boasts one of the most comprehensive systems in the US. Its network of 33,000 cameras has become a critical tool for criminal investigations, fostering safer communities. As agencies recognize the increasing value of video footage, new policies are emerging that require video footage to be retained for much longer durations. More bodycam and patrol car cameras are in use than ever before. Not only do agencies need a place to store an increasing amount of video footage for longer, the storage solution has to be Criminal Justice Information Systems (CJIS) compliant.
The retail industry notably leverages surveillance for loss prevention, while in manufacturing, video footage helps enhance workplace safety and asset security. In hospitals, video is used to monitor patients, improve patient care, and prevent unauthorized access to secure areas. Local authorities harness video surveillance to manage traffic flow and inform decisions about urban development.
Readiness for advanced AI analytics
New and innovative use-cases are emerging all the time. The integration of AI in video surveillance is opening up possibilities which were once the realm of science fiction.
Museum curators are leveraging video and AI tools for sentiment analysis to determine the emotive response visitors have to individual pieces of art and how long they spend examining each exhibit. Inside the correctional system, behavioral threat detection tracks patterns of group movement to identify the early signs of aggressive behavior. In retail, heat maps are being generated to show the most traveled routes through a store to support product placement strategies. Parking garages can be managed remotely using license plate recognition technology. And within education, video analytics are being used to protect students by identifying and alerting on active threat situations in real time.
Nasuni’s hybrid cloud solutions provide the secure and stable basis upon which AI processing can be layered to realize the full value of captured video.
Better management and improved scalability
The combination of new technologies, high resolution cameras, and advanced post-processing means larger files and more footage to manage and retain. These emerging requirements are putting pressure on IT leaders to provide increasing amounts of storage, while at the same time staying within budget. Nasuni helps here too. Our hybrid cloud platform consolidates file storage to reduce on-premise storage hardware by 95%. Our video file sync capabilities enable automatic, no-maintenance access to footage from remote sites. This makes the platform ideal for distributed teams, working with huge volumes of video data across large geographies.
As a case in point, Nasuni is currently working with a global fintech customer to evaluate the benefits of hybrid cloud for their 2.2 petabyte video surveillance environment. Another customer is already using Nasuni to manage the surveillance of their five manufacturing facilities across North America.
Perhaps most importantly, Nasuni seamlessly replaces legacy storage while providing the traditional protocols like SMB that leading video management systems require. Nasuni can provide video storage, whether your current environment is leveraging Network-attached storage (NAS) or Direct Attached Storage (DAS), while introducing all the flexibility and agility of a cloud-based global file system.
Embracing the surveilled future
The recent leaps forward in video surveillance technology do not have to mean greater expense and time-draining administrative tasks. With Nasuni’s hybrid cloud solutions for video surveillance, these advances become an opportunity to reduce costs, streamline management, and increase agility.
If you’re ready to modernize your video surveillance storage environment, let’s talk about how Nasuni can transform your video data management to drive business outcomes, improve public safety, and drastically reduce management time.